This is a story of betrayal. The ultimate pizza betrayal. A few weeks ago, Kerri and I planned to visit Queen Margherita in Magnolia after it had been recommended to us by Don, our pub trivia host. However, I ended up with the longest lasting cold in the world at the same time my boyfriend’s back was out and we had to reschedule for a few days later. But Kerri’s special guests were far too excited to eat this specific pizza, so she snuck off to Queen Margherita without me. She didn’t come clean about her dinner treason until our trip to Flying Squirrel.
Lucky for everyone, she tried a pizza she wouldn’t normally select at an official pizza meeting and was impressed enough to return.
On this trip, we had three special guest reviewers with us to taste pizza and polish off two bottles of Pergola Aleatico (a chilled red wine new to all of us). Lately it seems like our favourite pizza spots are the ones we don’t read or hear much about. Queen Margherita was off the Google radar compared to other places, but is without a doubt our favourite pizza in Seattle to date.
This was the pizza Kerri wished last week’s pizza could be. Her Queen Margherita (buffalo mozzarella + olive oil- $16) was light and refreshing and didn’t overfill her. The perfect meal for another warm Friday evening. She found the sauce simply AMAZING, and thought the olive oil drizzle and grana padano added something special to this pizza that has been lacking from a lot of the others. Most importantly, the burned crust bits on this pizza were isolated to the outer edges and were easy for her delicate aversion to burnt crust to avoid. She considered giving it a 5 but wants to wait to test the pepperoni at a later date before committing.
Luckily, I let special guest Elyse order before I did or I would have never known there was an option to add prosciutto to a regular margherita pizza because I was too excited to read the menu properly. What a delightful discovery. This was a great pizza that had everything all the other great pizzas so far had been lacking. It wasn’t soggy in the middle, and from memory is quite possibly the only Seattle Neapolitan we’ve had that maintained enough form to get from plate-to-face without a fork and knife to assist. But I like fork and knife pizza so I still used one. Now, while I’m usually complaining about the lack of basil, the sauce here was so perfect that I didn’t even notice how much basil was or wasn’t there. That meant the bites with basil were an even more pleasant surprise. No complaints about this one except that I wish it was bigger. (Margherita+ prosciutto- $16)
We gave Queen Margherita a 4.5 to play it safe, but it’s pretty likely we might bump it to 5 after trying a few different options on our next visit.
As for our guests: Shaun loved her Parma, which was loaded with arugula. “I like my pizza with a side of salad,” she said. Meanwhile Katie was a little discontented with the mozzarella ratio on her pizza. “I’m not really a big fan of cheese but this mozzarella was really good.” Elyse, not always a huge pizza fan, praised the crust for being soft, but still having some crispy pieces. “Overall I thought it was really good, I just wish it had more basil,” she said.
And then we all ordered dessert.
Seattle Pizza Coalition 